[Users] February 25, 2020 Zeta Alliance Conference Call Summary

[Randy Leiker]

Hello Zeta Alliance Community, 

Here is a summary of this week’s conference call. A few brief reminders: 


    * Conference calls are every Tuesday and open to all using either the FreeConferenceCall.com VoIP app or via a dial-in number: [ https://www.freeconferencecall.com/wall/zetalliance | https://www.freeconferencecall.com/wall/zetalliance ] 
    * Each week’s call agenda can be found at: [ https://docs.google.com/document/d/1uUUDJpwp2CAylU6lxtbEdVcUX_qSbciyes6gLTWw2fY/edit | https://docs.google.com/document/d/1uUUDJpwp2CAylU6lxtbEdVcUX_qSbciyes6gLTWw2fY/edit ] 
    * A copy of each week’s summary is also posted to the Zimbra Forum: 
        * January 2020: [ https://forums.zimbra.org/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=67572 | https://forums.zimbra.org/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=67572 ] 
        * February 2020: [ https://forums.zimbra.org/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=67726 | https://forums.zimbra.org/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=67726 ] 
    * Constructive feedback on these call summaries is always welcome. 

February 25, 2020 Conference Call Summary 

Upgrading Zimbra 9 and Zimbra X Zimlets 
Mark S. asked if resources were available to help Zimlet developers begin preparing existing Zimlet projects for compatibility with Zimbra 9 and Zimbra X. John E. said that a new SDK for Zimbra 9 Zimlets is expected to be available soon. In the interim, John suggested referring to the Zimlet CLI tool available at: https://github.com/Zimbra/zimlet-cli with documentation at https://github.com/Zimbra/zimlet-cli/wiki 

New Zimlets For Zimbra 9 
John E. reported that Zimlet integrations for Zoom, Dropbox, and Slack are expected to launch when Zimbra 9 becomes generally available. He also said that 36 new Zimlets in total for Zimbra 9 are expected to be released during 2020, but a timeline for when these Zimlets will be released is not currently available. John said that Zimbra is working to understand from partners and customers which Zimlet integrations are priorities, and this will set the timeline for when each Zimlet is released. He also suggested that Zimbra partners reach out to their regional Zimbra managers to provide Zimbra with feedback about which integrations they would like to see released first. Noah P. suggested prioritizing public calendar scheduling and CRM integrations. A video is currently available that demos the new Slack & Dropbox integrations in Zimbra 9: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykQbaSBudDA&feature=youtu.be 

Third party Zimlets for Zimbra 9 
Marc G. asked if third party Zimlets will continue to be allowed in Zimbra 9, as they have been in earlier Zimbra versions. John E. confirmed third party Zimlet integrations will continue to be available in Zimbra 9 and also explained that, every component in the new Zimbra 9 and Zimbra X UI (Mail, Calendar, Contacts, etc.) is now a Zimlet with no separate back-end components. 

Zimbra Drive and Zimbra Docs Feedback 
Marc G. suggested that it would be helpful if Zimbra could prioritize integrating a file synchronization feature in to Zimra Drive so that client-side apps can synchronize with Zimbra Drive. This would be similar to what Nextcloud/ownCloud offers with their WebDAV-based client-side apps for use with Zimbra Open Drive. Noah P. reported that he has had a tough time getting customers to adopt Zimbra Drive since it lacks a client-side file synchronization option and is essentially a closed silo of data. Mark S. said that his customers are continuing to use Zimbra Open Drive for its role-based permissions on folders. Marc G. pointed out that data sovereignty is important in Europe and having the ability to control where data is stored is a key benefit that Zimbra Drive could provide to partners and customers, which would be a big win for Zimbra. Randy L. said that Zimbra Docs also holds a lot of potential, but is likewise limited in that it can only store documents in Zimbra Drive, which cannot be synchronized with client-side apps. This is in comparison to what Dropbox provides with its Office-like app suite, where documents are available on any device for synchronization. John E. said that he will share all of this feedback with the Zimbra product team. 

Zimbra 8.8.15 Patch 7 Feedback 
Mark S. asked if anyone has experienced issues who installed 8.8.15 P7. No issues were reported by those on the call that had installed Patch 7. Similarly, no one on the call had come across complaints in the Zimbra Forum related to Patch 7. 

Follow-Up of Past Call Topics 
In the February 4th call, David M. had reported an issue where customers could not send email messages containing attachments larger than 6 MB from email client apps using ActiveSync with Zimbra 8.8.12. David reported in today’s call that this issue has been resolved with the 8.8.15 P7 update. 

In the January 28th call, Mark S. reported a Zimbra forum posting ( https://forums.zimbra.org/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=67633&p=295515&hilit=zimbra+domain+authentication#p295515) advising that a Microsoft required security change in the March 2020 Windows Update may break AD integration with Zimbra. John H. said that Zimbra is currently testing this Microsoft change to determine what changes, if any, will be needed within Zimbra. 

Upcoming Partner Call/Webinar and Zimbra Cloud Suite 
John E. reported that a partner conference call/webinar is being planned soon that will discuss Zimbra 9 and the Zimbra Cloud Suite. Cloud Suite is an experiment by the Zimbra development and product teams to work out issues around self-service support by Zimbra customers, but it will not be a service that rolls out for direct to customer sales. Cloud Suite will be based on Zimbra X and is expected to be sold solely through partners. Several partners on the call expressed concerns that Cloud Suite would put Zimbra in to direct competition with Zimbra BSPs selling the same on-premises product. John E. clarified that this is not Synacor’s intent, but rather Cloud Suite is targeted at service providers who have very large Zimbra deployments and want a Synacor managed email hosting service. There was quite a bit of skepticism by those on the call and John E. promised that Synacor would provide greater clarification on how Cloud Suite will operate during the upcoming partner call/webinar. 


Randy Leiker ( randy at skywaynetworks.com ) 
Skyway Networks, LLC 

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